


you are what you love (and not what loves you back)

by bebitched



Category: Twilight
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-31
Updated: 2008-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-02 10:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bebitched/pseuds/bebitched
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three points of view on a metaphorical train wreck (Bella, Edward, Jacob).</p>
            </blockquote>





	you are what you love (and not what loves you back)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Watson Twins' song "You Are What You Love." Special thanks to my lovely beta **chinesebakery** for getting back to me so quickly.

 

 

There are some messes that can’t be cleaned up and put in their proper place by a ‘meant to be’ and two tiny words said to a priest in the pretty white dress. Sometimes it’s only natural to cry over spilt milk because, in the end, it’s all you really have.

 

\---

 

{Bella}

 

 

You’d counted out the steps in your head, a steady beat to keep you from tripping. You didn’t want someone to have to come save you. Not this time. The garden and the guests are the last thing on your mind as you take a deep breath.

 

One.

 

You sit at the reception and you feel like you’re falling. Or maybe that you wish you were, because gravity means that eventually you’ll land somewhere somehow and at this point you’re not sure you will. That maybe you belong on that white cake instead of a plastic figurine, always teetering on the edge of resolution or finality but never quite there.

 

_Two._

 

There are monsters at your wedding, werewolves and vampires and your parents are playing the part of zombies, still shocked and dismayed, and you knew you’d always been the freak. It’s only now that you stand out because everyone else isn’t as normal as you are. Not everyone belongs in beauty and the beast. Sometimes the prince stays inhuman, or loses his humanity some time during the story and no magic spell is going to right it.

 

_Three._

 

There’s a fault line you’re straddling, Edward on one side and Jacob and the other and the constant motion of it makes you fall, like you always do. He catches you (this time) and you’d never felt so fragile.

 

_Four._

 

You’d split yourself in half a long time ago, one part longing for the simplicity of first loves and the other yearning to touch fire and not get burned. It’s only when you tried to put yourself back together did you realize that the pieces didn’t fit anymore.

 

You never get to five.

 

\---

 

He takes you to Europe, to see the Eiffel tower and the Louvre and a couple places you can’t pronounce, and you feel so tiny there.

 

_Age before beauty_.

 

You are different in the light, but you're the same people back home. You’re not quite Edward and Bella like you’re always been and you like it that way. You’re grown up now, a married woman with a family and responsibilities and experiences.

 

No one calls you a little girl anymore.

 

\---

 

This is a dangerous line to be walking, but you’d always been a beacon for danger, or at least a devourer of it, and you wouldn’t be you if you weren’t tempting the fates. Besides, you are about to lose so much, and you couldn’t bear to lose yourself too. But you don’t like the word, lost, like this was all an accident and not a decisive plan to cut yourself off from this thing they call humanity.

 

If only it were as simple as the blade of scissors.

 

Alice doesn’t try to stop you, not this time, and you walk to the boundary line. Normally you would drive for such a long distance (you trip four times, but who’s counting?) but the sleek leather-interior jungle cat that’s replaced your sturdy mutt smells like Edward and tastes like ice and it just wouldn’t be right. He’s surprised to see you, shocked even, with this rock on your finger and the ache of another still inside you, but he takes you in his arms and half of you is screaming but the other half is sighing _home_.

 

Both parts sit silent when he takes you to his bed and you let him.

 

 

\--- 

 

It’s a difficult thing to describe, this letting go by giving in, because in all rationality this would be considered being reeled back to him and making things more complicated. But when you go, when you tug your jeans on and slip out the door without looking back, Jacob doesn’t watch you leave and this is what passes for an ending in most storybooks.

 

\---

 

{Edward}

 

 

Alice’s thoughts turn sour in the autumn as the leaves change orange, frustrated as they begin to fall, and frantic by the time they lie trampled and brown on the concrete.

 

You try to maintain a sense of composure, for Bella’s sake, but Alice keeps blocking you, singing Ode to Joy and trying to recall the notes in her head, constantly. She’s never been able to keep something from you for this long, and you wonder if it’s because your concentration has broken, with Bella moving in and her clothes mixed with yours and her bathroom kit on the sink. Distractions that you would have thought welcome, but now you wonder if it makes you weak.

 

Nonsense. Alice is just being flighty, teasing you because she knows you’re not as focused as you once were. But then Bella drifts by in the kitchen and she’s so different these days. Nothing tangible, nothing you can name, but something about her is… off. It frustrates you, not knowing, and you’d never been so annoyed that you can’t read her mind. You watch Alice watching her and something slips through the German chorus-

 

_Why can’t I see you?_

 

Alice seems to realize her mistake and she glances at you, probably afraid you’ll overreact. You don’t, but you observe Bella a little more carefully now.

 

\---

 

Bella disappears a week later and it’s all you can do not to choke Alice.

 

“You knew something like this would happen.”

 

Alice shakes her head, visibly rattled. She isn’t used to being surprised.

 

“I haven’t been able to see her future since September. I thought… it was a mistake.”

 

You bring your face close to hers, a snarl nearly ripping lose from your throat.

 

“What was a mistake.”

 

She doesn’t meet your eyes but the symphony finally stops, letting her thoughts spill freely into yours.

 

_I told her. Last night. I thought she might know why._

 

You retreat into the corner (you’re not used to getting backed into anything) and bury your head in your hands.

 

_Oh Bella. What made you run?_

 

\---

 

It’s nearly a year of death (your mind, the air, your heart, but you suppose that isn’t any different) before Alice shrieks downstairs and you smell her in the wind. The space-time barrier can’t hold you and you don’t think you’ve ever moved so fast, but suddenly she’s there and you weren’t even aware your legs had twitched.

 

Bella smiles and it’s like a blind man finally seeing the light again. You’re too distracted by picking her up (more reckless than you usually would allow) to notice that it doesn’t reach her eyes.

 

\---

 

Your siblings keep their distance and it’s almost like starting all over again, but it’s more than readjusting to the blood lust. Their thoughts pester you:

 

_Where was she?_

_Will she leave again?_

_Why did she run?_

 

You shake your head to wipe them away, almost like those silly etch-a-sketches that had been the craze a decade ago, hoping the movement would clear it free of the negativity. Her skin is still warm under your fingertips as you touch her cheek, her head sleeping and her body curled up.

 

You’re just content to be home again.

 

\---

 

“Both sides of the bargain have been carried out. There’s just one last condition…”

 

She stands with her hands on her hips, a stern expression on her face and you would laugh if it weren’t for the subject matter. You were hoping this would be less like a business transaction, but the selfish part of you is relieved she still wants it. When she left all you were left to do was doubt and muse and it chipped at your confidence.

 

“Alright.” You agree, “Tonight.”

 

She nods once, and you think she’s going to make you shake on it, but instead she collapses into the couch and you think maybe it’s just your imagination that her body fits perfectly around yours.

 

\---

 

When her eyes stain red and she bares her teeth, landing swiftly on the back of a deer and tearing out its jugular, you hope she’s not going to regret this.

 

(You don’t say ‘in the end’ because there won’t be one, not for the two of you.)

 

\---

 

{Jacob}

 

The others think you’re insane to let her get to you again, after all the pieces you’ve already left abandoned because they’re too shattered to be put back together into anything resembling whole, but you know you’ll be glad you said goodbye, after.

 

You won’t get all flowery and poetic about it like the leech would, won’t put pretty words to the truth: she didn’t pick you and it sucks. It sucks a lot. It hurts when you’re thinking about her and it hurts when you aren’t, but you hope this itching in your chest means it’s starting to heal. Your sheets still smell like her and you wait a month to change them, because you can’t move on if still you dream about her, wrapped in her.

 

Even _you_ know what’s unhealthy. 

 

\---

 

The pack doesn’t phase together as much as they used to, and you miss it. Ache for that sense of unity, being four limbs, one mind, a single panting breath. You know it’s because they’ve begun to splinter into their own lives, spending time with their own wives, girlfriends, but you think it should mean something that you all alone share this dual nature, this splitting of beast and man. But when families get too big, like the way this one grows every time another imprints and the secret seeps a little further, you think it stops meaning as much. You feel like you’re the only one without something (someone) else to come home to.

 

You miss Bella, not as things are, but as what could have been, and it wouldn’t bother you so much if you didn’t know she could have been happy with you.

 

\---

 

You know she’s been here when you walk up to the house, not with smell or sound or sight (she’s long gone, you know that much), but with a feeling that makes you wonder if there really are just five senses because it tingles wherever she’s been.

 

Then you hear it. A loud cry, guttural and shrill and you would cover your ears if you weren’t so damned scared. There’s movement on the front porch, a tiny flail and you’re moving before you can really think about potential danger. A shock of dark hair, pudgy little fists wrapped tight inside the pretty pink fabric and a note:

 

_I’m so sorry. I love her, but I can’t take care of her like I should, like she deserves. Please, love her for me. I trust you to raise her right. _

_She has your nose._

_Bella._

 

\---

 

You hold her and you feel more awkward than you ever have; she looks too tiny in your bulky arms, cradled tight against your chest. You butcher several lullabies before she’s a full three months old, before you find an old native song that’s low enough for your baritone voice and as she drifts along on the notes you don’t think that you’ve ever seen something so perfect.

 

Sometimes you think of giving up, of handing her off to someone more qualified than an overgrown teenager, because being a single dad is really so much more than you can handle rightly. But you love her, more than anything, more than Bella, and something so unconditional doesn’t shrivel under the glare of _difficult_.

 

You name her Rose Marie because when you take her into the forest for the first time, she sees a little wild rose climbing up a tree and she whines when she can’t reach for it. Sometimes she’s so much like her mother it hurts.

 

\---

 

The glittery decorations look all wrong in the small house, pink streamers slung over one hundred year old wood carvings and a vanilla cake in the refrigerator beside a container of fresh fish and it almost makes you laugh. Quil’s the one that sticks the candle in (pink too, and you have a feeling she’ll end up hating the color because it’s just so cliché and _everywhere_), a single wavering candle to signify the singe steadfast year that she’s been here. The chorus of Happy Birthday begins and you’re tempted to laugh again, because it’s a room full of men with voices too deep for harmony and none of you can carry a tune. But she bounces happily in your lap, her mouth a wide O and her eyes crinkled with a smile.

 

_Happy birthday dear Ro-ose, happy birthday to you. _

 

You blow out the candle for her because you know her tiny lungs wouldn’t be able to manage it, yet she still manages to look up at you with what looks like accusation. You know, someday soon, too soon, you’ll be working hard just to keep up with her.

 

Embry slaps her five with her little hand in congratulations for surviving a whole year under your trial-and-error parenting style, but you know he means well. He doesn’t doubt your ability; none of them do. You can hear it in their heads when you transform (there’s no lies here, not anymore). She opens her presents (with your help) and manages to act surprised at each one, never failing to make the grown men around you giggle like little girls. Leah smiles warmly as she finally pries Rose from your protective grip.

 

“Go get yourself a piece of cake. You know it won’t be there for long.”

 

It’s not the first time you’ve marveled at the change in Leah, and you wouldn’t be lying if you said that she was the one most taken with the little girl. She’s the baby niece of the whole pack, never wanting for a babysitter or a play date or a strong set of arms to pick her up from her many tumbles, but Leah had become something of a mother to the girl, filling in for what the men of the pack could never provide. You’re thankful that she’s here, thankful that her eyes don’t glint back like stone and fire anymore. She has a beautiful smile; you’d almost forgotten. 

 

Your dad eventually takes possession of Rose, and she sits on his lap like a princess on a throne surveying her kingdom as she looks down at her hoard of presents and the subjects that would do anything for her.

 

You think that it’s a relief to miss Bella for Rose and not for yourself anymore.

\---

 

The splash of water catches your attention, and you jerk your head around from your perch on the drift wood. Rose and Claire flick another squirt in your direction and you glare playfully.

 

Your father said that there had never been a girl more taken care of than her. You feel sorry for any date she ever brings home, and not just because of you. The last thing a scared boy wants to see when he comes to meet his girlfriend’s family is a pack of ridiculously large men with a protective streak, but you guess you’ll cross that bridge when you come to it.

 

The scent of vampire catches your attention and you stiffen, angling your body quickly towards the forest. The leaves rustle evenly in time with the wind, but you know they rarely make any sounds they don’t mean to. You see her eyes first, amber and practically glowing, just like the Cullens’ had been. Your mouth hangs open at the sight of her, unchanged after ten years, but you don’t guess that’s any big surprise. Her gaze darts to the water and you don’t dare follow her eyes, afraid to be reminded of all the similarities between the two of them. But Bella smiles then, wide and (you don’t want to say) motherly, her eyes lighting up even more. It makes you bristle, a huff almost puffing out of your mouth at the idea that she’s proud, or at least vindicated by what she sees.

 

“I could have your ass for breaking the treaty.”

 

You only whisper it into the wind but you know she can hear you; _her kind_ has ears like sonar. Her grin only deepens. _You haven’t changed. _

There’s a moment where you think she’s going to take a step further, out into the open, and  your eyes dart to Rose. You haven’t explained this to her, or at least not all of it, beyond that her mother loved her and wanted her to be safe. As a little girl she’d merely nodded mutely, her eyes round in reverence because she knew you were never vague, always piercingly honest, and if you wouldn’t tell her this, that meant it must be important. She knows about the pack of course, and it seemed as if the fact the daddy and her uncles shape-shifted into big dogs was like a second skin to her, an accepted truth. The vampires would have to come later… much later. But she’s stretching into teenager-hood and you know it’s just a matter of time before the walls of your tiny apartment on the reservation won’t be able to hold her curiosity anymore.

 

Yet Bella backs away, the two butterscotch pupils fading into the dark foliage. You almost want to call out to her, tell her not to leave like a coward, not again, but something makes you stop. Would you kill her on instinct? You doubt it, but no need to test boundaries that you don’t have to, especially considering your still lingering anger towards her. Her face disappears, leaving you to wonder if she was ever really there to begin with.

 

“We’re ready to go if you are. Dad? Hey, are you okay?”

 

Your head snaps toward hers at the touch of her hand on your arm and her brown eyes stare back intently. You breathe easier, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

 

“I’m nothing- I mean, _it’s_ nothing. I’m fine.”

 

She gives you an odd look and rolls her eyes and your heart breaks, just a little at the familiarity of it.

 

“Oooookay, Dad. Can we go? It’s windy out here and we’re starting to get cold.”

 

You glance at the tree line, picking out nothing but leaves and branches. Something strikes you just then; a sense of gratitude towards the vampire formerly known as Bella Swan. She’d given you a daughter, a reason to sway toward your human side instead of succumbing to the wolf and the anger that threatened to consume you. You wonder if that had been her plan all along; if you couldn’t have her, she would give you something better. But you didn’t think even Bella had that kind of foresight.

 

“Sure thing. Let’s get going.”

 

\---

 

Sometimes, when it seems impossible, when the broken pieces stop fitting together after so much falling apart, you find that they’re prettier where the lie on the ground. Shattered glass turns to sand if it suffers though enough trauma and sometimes there’s resolution when at first you see chaos.

 

Life doesn’t have endings, at least not really; there’s death, heartbreak, poison, but things keep moving, keep shifting, keep fracturing and mending.

 

   


End file.
